Neither Schwartz in 1984 nor Slatkes in 1992 included the painting in their catalogues of Rembrandt’s paintings. Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt, His Life, His Paintings: A New Biography with All Accessible Paintings Illustrated in Colour (New York, 1985). Leonard Slatkes, Rembrandt: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1992). Tümpel in 1986 (as well as in the English edition of 1993) rejects the painting as an autograph Rembrandt and attributes it instead to a pupil. See Christian Tümpel, Rembrandt: All Paintings in Colour (Antwerp, 1993), 431–32, no. A83.

This mixture of paints was probably used to tone down what would otherwise be too harsh a contrast with the background, which is bright in this place. For other examples, see Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4, Self-Portraits, ed. Ernst van de Wetering (Dordrecht, 2005), Addendum 4, 640–41, and A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2, 1631–1634, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (Dordrecht, Boston, and Lancaster, 1986), chapter 5, 99–106.

Only the broader panel was able to be examined by Peter Klein. For this and the following information on the panel, see Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4, Self-Portraits, ed. Ernst van de Wetering (Dordrecht, 2005), Addendum 4, 640–42.

Rembrandt painted his first portrait on an oval support in 1632: Portrait of Harder Rijcksen, 1632, oil on panel, 64 x 47 cm, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen, on loan from the Peter and Irene Ludwig Stiftung. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2, 1631–1634, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (Dordrecht, Boston, and Lancaster, 1986), no. A 60 (as unknown sitter). On the popularity of the oval format for portraits in the 1630s, see Pieter J. J. van Thiel and Cornelis J. de Bruyn Kops, Prijst de lijst: De Hollandse schilderijlijst in de zeventiende eeuw (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (The Hague, 1984), 118.

Painted framings of this kind, which occur quite often in Rembrandt’s work, possibly served as a guide for the frame maker. Comparable framing (painted or even scratched in the wet paint) occurs in other Rembrandt paintings. See, for example, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery of 1644 in London (Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 5, Small-Scale History Paintings, ed. Ernst van de Wetering [Dordrecht, 2011], no. 3); The Holy Family of 1645 in St. Petersburg (A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 5, Small-Scale History Paintings, ed. Ernst van de Wetering [Dordrecht, 2011], no. 4); the Self-Portrait of 1669 in The Hague (A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4, Self-Portraits, ed. Ernst van de Wetering [Dordrecht, 2005], no. 29); and the Self-Portrait as St. Paul of 1661 in Amsterdam (A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4, Self-Portraits, ed. Ernst van de Wetering [Dordrecht, 2005], no. 24).

In France, such collars were usually trimmed with a wide edge of bobbin lace.

In 1966 Bauch (Kurt Bauch, Rembrandt: Gemälde [Berlin, 1966], 19, no. 364) hypothesized that this picture was a portrait of the painter Jacob Adriaensz Backer (1608–51). This suggestion was rightly rejected, as Backer was only 25 years old in 1633 and therefore younger than the man depicted. Furthermore, Backer, with his Mennonite background, would never have donned such a colorful coat. The Mennonites, who were antimilitary and particularly conservative with regard to their outward appearance, dressed mostly in simple, dark clothing.

Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2, 1631–1634, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (Dordrecht, Boston, and Lancaster, 1986), C 81. Relying on the sapwood statistics for Eastern Europe, Peter Klein established an earliest felling date of 1628 for this panel. Adding to that a minimum seasoning time of two years, this portrait could not have been painted before 1630.

Jaap van der Veen, however, has correctly observed that this argument is not conclusive because sometimes the master would paint a portrait and a pupil its pendant. See Jaap van der Veen, “Hendrick Uylenburgh’s Art Business, Production, and Trade Between 1625 and 1655,” in Uylenburgh & Son: Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse, ed. Friso Lammertse and Jaap van der Veen (Exh. cat. London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (Zwolle, 2006), 145. See, for example, the pendants of a seated man and woman of ca. 1632 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, both painted on identical walnut panels. The portrait of the man, attributed to Rembrandt, is unlike that of the woman. See Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2, 1631–1634, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (Dordrecht, Boston, and Lancaster, 1986), A 45 and C 80.

Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2, 1631–1634, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (Dordrecht, Boston, and Lancaster, 1986), A 84. The opinion that this portrait of a woman could be the companion piece to the Portrait of a Man in a Red Coat was also noted by George Keyes in Rembrandt in America: Collecting and Connoisseurship, ed. George Keyes, Tom Rassieur, and Dennis P. Weller (Exh. cat. Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art; Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts) (New York, 2011), 117, 138, n. 7.

The most important reason for this assumption is the oddly slanting position of the female figure in the oval picture field, as a result of which the earrings do not hang vertically, which indicates that the panel was cut down to its oval shape only after it was painted. This support is not beveled all around either. See Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2, 1631–1634, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. (Dordrecht, Boston, and Lancaster, 1986), A 84. Unfortunately, this is one of the very few paintings by Rembrandt that has not yet undergone dendrochronological examination. It is therefore impossible to ascertain whether the panels came from the same tree.

Even in pendants in which the woman is older than the man, as seen in the portraits of Dirck Jansz Pesser (Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2, 1631–1634, ed. Josua Bruyn et al. [Dordrecht, Boston, and Lancaster, 1986], A102, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Haesje van Cleyburg (ibid., A103, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), both of 1634, Rembrandt typically painted the male portrait in a much broader style than that of the woman.

The characterization of the wood is based on Peter Klein’s dendrochronology report. Only the wider plank could be analyzed and dated.

The left plank is 37.8 cm wide and the right is 13 cm wide.

In Addendum 2 of Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4, Self-Portraits, ed. Ernst van de Wetering (Dordrecht, 2005). In comment 2 of the Corpus entry, Van de Wetering states, “The longitudinal axis of the panel is somewhat longer than that of the painted oval. Consequently the ground and traces of brown underpainting along the upper and lower edges (gradually narrowing at the sides) were never covered with the paint with which the background and the red costume were painted.”